Intel fixes Sandy Bridge bug

Chipzilla has announced that it will ship its i7-3960X Extreme Edition and i7-3930K processor in January after fixing a bug which affected the CPU’s hardware accelerated virtualisation support.

While C1 CPUs are only running the software-accelerated only mode, the C2 now properly supports hardware acceleration on a hosted OS, Intel said. C2 removes the VT-d bug in C1 CPUs, Intel says.

According to some Intel paperwork seen by Tom’s Hardware, samples of the C2 Sandy Bridge-E processors became available last week. Commercial retail and tray units will begin shipping on January 20.

However Intel does not think that there will be any “change to customer platforms designed to Intel guidelines.” If a customer wants to enable Intel VT-d, it suggests “regression testing is recommended to ensure their board is properly enabled.”

Regression testing is very important because there is nothing worse than having a server which was once Henry the VIII in a past life, when the software is pure Anne Boleyn. Regression testing remains you can rule out karma for a server misbehaving.

Intel said that customers who prefer their own BIOS will have to install the latest microcode update to support the C2 stepping.